Senbon Umishima is an illustrator, animator and manga artist. As animation director for Makato Shinkai on his first feature film, She and Her Cat, she's highly regarded in the industry and has over 100,000 devoted followers on twitter. All of which makes this new compilation of her work particularly enticing.
Artbooks are a dangerous rabbit hole to get sucked into, as they're often deeply personal purchases. As such, they're hard to move on when you're needing to free up a bookshelf or two, but such is the quality of A Bouquet of a Thousand Flowers, I doubt moving it on will be a problem, though I doubt you'll ever want to.
The book is split into sections, and it makes sense to go through these in order.
Before we get to the first chapter, Characters, we're greeted with a preface from the artists in English and Japanese, capturing an absurdly beautiful happenstance that gave her pause for thought one day. This breezy sense of wonder is writ large through what follows in the book, and sets the perfect tone for an appointment with an artful soul. I liked it very much.
Characters contains scores of full-body drawings of attractive girls in various settings, but what really marks the book as something different is the pages with a single character drawn in various states of dance. The graceful poses are stunningly captured, making a perfect reference for anyone studying the form, as well as providing a feeling of choreographed movement and swirling skirts across the pages. Other illustrations feature pastel colours and a myriad of styles and settings. It's a great opening to the book.
Chapter 2 covers Landscapes, which take a great deal of inspiration from European settings, all stone houses and cobbled streets surrounded by lush and verdant fields. Landscapes is a little misleading as almost every image features a character enjoying the view, taking a drink or simply capture a snapshot of idyllic daily life. Some of the pages show the transition from concept to finished piece, and this too is a helpful insight into the artists process. While many scenes are countrified, the artists ability to turn her hand to other ideas is also showcased with some impressive street, beach and fantasy settings. It's like going on a holiday tour of the imagination.
The third chapter is entitled Sketches, and as the name suggests contains rougher works of fish, penguins, landscapes and characters. It is the shortest of the chapters, but while the designs maybe less glossy than others in this book, they are no less vivid or fulsome in their depictions on paper. In the case of more water-coloured and less detailed pieces, they evoke a dreamlike quality that make for some of my favourite artwork in the book.
Moving onto Works, these are the images that are more likely to be familiar to readers, with digitally coloured renditions of work on series such as Black Bullet and Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. Character model sheets are also included here, and while it is arguably the sharpest part of the book, it's not as personal as the other chapters. This is where art meets commerce before emerging with a flourish into some colourful promotional art and ending on a vista showing a sunset beach and characters from a distance. It's a beautiful image to end the colour work on and shows the level of care put into making the book flow so beautifully.
Finally, we have a Postscript message from the artist, followed by a number of manga shorts in the Comics section. These showcase some lovely sequential artwork and emotive character moments, but will remain somewhat mysterious given the lack of English translation.
The structure of the book, and the thoughtful translations into English, provides a wonderfully fluid and entertaining tour through the talents of artist Senbon Umishima. There's a real cadance to the volume, which is fitting given her clear love for, and talent at depicting, graceful movement. This is a book meant to be savoured over a sunny afternoon, or provide the feeling of one on a rainy morning. The book evokes a very feminine and thoughtful look at the world, and is all the better for the clear and pleasant voice it has.
This book was purchased from Amazon for review.
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